Shadow Shots
by Alas Poor Yorcake
Summary: A series of drabbles revolving around a small headcanon of mine. Rated T. If you come for fluff and/or happiness, this is not the place for you.
1. Chapter 1: Seclusion

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 1: Seclusion**

* * *

They appear soon after he has scrubbed his hands to the bone and bandaged the raw skin that was left. He doesn't notice them at first, because he has secluded himself from the light, a small punishment to remind him that he has no light inside him that can shine and illuminate his premise. The regeneration energy, flowing in cycles to fix his hands, is the only possibility.

He keeps it properly covered.

What he has done is a dark deed, and it's a sort of vigil, mourning period, penance for those he has killed, those he will kill, and, perhaps, his own death.

It's too dark in his mind to notice them, at first.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	2. Chapter 2: Penance

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 2: Penance**

* * *

The first time he does notice, it's barely a glance.

He's spent an unknown amount of time - days, at the least, decades, at the most - in the dark, so when he opens his eyes to some actual light, he isn't surprised by the stinging pain and figures floating across his vision.

Days later, the figures haven't faded away.

He doesn't question his penance.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	3. Chapter 3: Position

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 3: Position**

* * *

It's not 'haunting' these shadows are employing their physical forms in doing. Haunting requires presence in the mind, torment, obsession.

Well. At least his role in this relationship is much simpler.

Madness only requires the lack of sanity.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	4. Chapter 4: Pretending

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 4: Pretending**

* * *

They play him the hero. Saving the day, one death at a time. Except that one time when everybody lived excluding the Doctor because his pain had scabbed over, only to be torn open again, gushing and protruding and egregiously fitting.

He's the broken hero.

He wishes being was as easy as pretending.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	5. Chapter 5: Disappointment

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 5: Disappointment**

* * *

He hopes this isn't real. It's a silent night, but only because the shadows are fidgeting. Waiting.

He prays he isn't real.

Maybe then none of this would be happening.

He drifts, dreams he died in the blast that killed off Gallifrey.

Wakes up with a crushing feeling of disappointment.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	6. Chapter 6: Martha

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 6: Martha**

* * *

She loves him.

She doesn't know what she's getting into.

Humans come with baggage.

 _He_ owns the entire baggage claim in every airport in every state in every country in every world.

Humans' baggage is their past. _His_ baggage is packed with the past, future, and present.

The shadows move. The Doctor moves to avoid them. A puppet on a string, the Doctor moves where they don't, unwittingly doing their bidding.

She thinks she has fallen in love with him. She's only fallen in love with the shadows in his eyes.

He's happy to pretend that's not the same thing.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	7. Chapter 7: Daleks

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 7: Daleks**

* * *

The Daleks, in some twisted form of irony, are the brightest things he's ever seen. The shadows twist and deform around them, and the Doctor has heard, more than once, the screams that emanate from shadows that touch the Daleks. So, instead of touching the Daleks, the shadows just hover around them, the contrast around them making them unnaturally bright.

The Doctor, shadows weaving through his eyes and passing through his skin, can't look at them for too long for fear of going blind.

On some level, he supposes, he envies the Daleks.

Wouldn't mind spending centuries taking one apart to find its secret.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	8. Chapter 8: Extinction

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 8: Extinction**

* * *

The Master dies, the Doctor cries.

And, suddenly, the shadows shift, move. The Doctor's screams die down, because the shadows don't like noise and he doesn't want them here, not now, doesn't want the Master - to -

The shadows are enveloping the Master before the Doctor can stop them. And how would he anyway? Shadows are nothing. Wind. Dust. Extinction.

The Master falls into the dark embrace and with a blink, the Master has become one of them.

The Doctor backs himself into a corner and cries.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	9. Chapter 9: Sleep

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 9: Sleep**

* * *

The shadows sleep for him, now. They lie around him, curdle under his sheets, slither in his closet, and tuck him into bed. They steal his sleep and feed him with their own energy. He is indebted to them, for they are fading away by giving him their energy. Whether he asked them or not, he has traded sleep for a debt. For guilt.

For as many shadows feeding him copious energy, he wonders why it still feels so hard to move around the guilt.

He carries on.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	10. Chapter 10: Dots

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 10: Dots**

* * *

His heart jumps to his mouth when Donna comes out of the shadows, dressed in black, almost screaming. She's certainly yelling, but the Doctor cannot make out any comprehensible words as the shadows recede and he belatedly realizes it's the middle of the day.

Right.

She rattles on about a giant wasp, and the Doctor desperately tries to make sense of her burblings.

He's a bit shaken when she explains it and, at its simplicity, he has to wonder why he took so long to realize, why it took so long to connect the dots.

He supposes he hasn't connected right with anything in a long time. Has started to doubt if the dots were really there.

Doesn't want to see the picture they'd form afterward.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	11. Chapter 11: Voices

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 11: Voices**

* * *

He enters the Library and feels it, at once. The absence of people leaves snickers in the shadows, silent crying ringing in his ears, the tentative cries reaching out, touching, begging -

The shadows had employed voices.

An emotion that rarely rises in him suddenly strikes, echoing and reverberating through his skull and in his blood and pressing against his vocal chords: fear.

"Donna," he said, with a sort of trepidation, waver in his voice that Donna didn't seem to notice over her own discomfort. "Stay out of the shadows."

He doesn't tell her to be afraid of the shadows, or to not communicate with the shadows, because he knows one day she'll become a shadow of her own, trailing him through wilderness and adventures and darkness and where only the dead traverse.

Hopefully one day he'll become a shadow as well.

He supposes he's died a long time ago.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	12. Chapter 12: Laughter

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 12: Laughter**

* * *

"Count your shadows."

The Doctor balks at the sentence, recoils. A flaw in that plan unseen by the others, forming the Doctor as a liability.

He can't see who has two shadows when the entire room is enveloped by them. But to tell them ... the prospect is so worthy of keeping under wraps, the Doctor would rather find himself with two shadows than reveal it to this crowd.

The Doctor tiptoes around the edge of an abrupt shadow, yelps (in a most embarrassing manner), startled. He has two shadows.

No, he has one shadow. His mind is on being a liability, the shadows are playing tricks on him.

The snickering in the shadows grows louder, and the Doctor swallows with a sudden jolt that it's not just the shadows that are laughing.

Donna is smothering her mouth with the back of her hand. River is chuckling softly, shaking her head with a bemused smile. The Doctor feels an embarrassed flush grow on his cheeks. Some part of him rebels, tells him they wouldn't be laughing if they knew why the Doctor had made that noise.

He knew there was a reason he wouldn't ever tell them about the shadows.

He needs a little laughter in his life.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	13. Chapter 13: Tells

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 13: Tells**

* * *

It's the thoughts belonging to madmen that keep him awake, alert. He aches to reach out, laugh with the shadows, cry with the shadows, beg with them, but they're begging for him and if he joins them he won't have anything to beg for - except that they stay silent. Quiet, quiet, quiet, and silence speaks words humans can't interpret but shadows speak things that his companions would loathe to hear, hear of what he's become -

The shadows have been talking to Donna Noble. He can see it in her eyes.

In River Song's, as well, with the way she looks at him, when she thinks he's not looking.

He flits his gaze to the reflective glass on the marble counter, sees the shadows in his own crazed, humiliated eyes.

He slowly, silently, goes mad.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	14. Chapter 14: Fitting

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 14: Fitting**

* * *

"What did they tell you?" he whispers to himself as Donna passes by, a mere hours after River had sacrificed herself. Her shadow has followed him into the TARDIS and to the kitchen, but it's unusually small. He wonders if it will grow over time.

"What'd you say?" she throws back carelessly, opening the fridge door and pulling out a snack that was quite popular on Raaxel VIII. It was blue, sponge-like, and had a bland taste; though it had a special chemical created naturally on Raaxel VIII with properties like nicotine. Addicting and bad for your system - in abundance, of course. Thankfully, the TARDIS filtered out the chemical while Donna slept, but she still took to snacking on the things absentmindedly.

She tossed one to the Doctor, who caught it and placed it on the table immediately, repulsed. He couldn't help but find it distasteful. Too _fitting_ in his mouth.

Having realized he didn't answer Donna, the Doctor muttered a small, "Nothing, never mind."

He eyed the snack.

Dropped it in the bin on his way out.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	15. Chapter 15: Midnight

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 15: Midnight**

* * *

He won't dare to tell Donna what happened on Midnight. Being himself, he probably won't tell anyone. Won't speak of the friend he had made, of the odd colored shadows in her eyes, of the hollow humanity in the shadows that passed from Skye to himself.

The shadows were different, somehow. They weren't black like the empty space Gallifrey used to occupy is now - not like every other shadow - but rather a dazzling grey. Dazzling not because of the vibrancy of color, but dazzling because he had never seen a shadow of grey before.

It felt more substantial than the other shadows. The shadows of bags under Skye's eyes, the shadows of tear tracks down her cheeks, the shadows of humanity slowly being consumed and eventually dissipating. The shadows in her eyes twisted and swirled in ringlets. They moved in slow, gradual moves, unlike normal shadows which were sharp, abrupt.

They visibly moved. Maybe, just maybe, they were _alive_.

The Doctor was scared. Terrified, petrified, alarmed, aghast, overwrought, disturbed, horrified. There wasn't a word strong enough to describe the emotion curdling in his heart and pumping through his blood and raising the hair on his skin and sending tingling, spastic signals through all of his nerves.

He couldn't get enough of it.

It was like nothing he had ever felt before; like his adventures in the past but doubled, tripled, _quadrupled_. There was no boundary to this all-encompassing fear, and the Doctor embraced it like a child with a safety blanket. His normal adventures had exhilarated fear that set his teeth on edge and made his muscles loosen on their own accord with the nerve-wracking emotions; Gallifrey had been a dreaded fear of things to come in the deathly whispers of loneliness and guilt; this was on a whole different level.

Self-endangerment was a concept the Doctor was intimately familiar with, but this was so much different. He could feel - tangibly, around him, in the air, a sort of corporeal feeling - the danger to his life. He could taste it, what he was walking straight into, that he could die at any moment - or worse, live with this creature inside of him. Survive with a living death and claim possession of the line between life and death.

The Doctor took a deep breath and memorized the nuances of everything around him - the blatant fear on the humans, the tiring and pale complexion of the atmosphere around them, the tension palpable in the air being sliced to tatters by the knives of words that spilled from the humans' throats, the vibration of his own vocal chords that weren't in his control, the slow slipping backward, backward, making no attempt to hold on to consciousness, happy to float back out of reality and drown in his own submissive mind.

He laughs, dying.

When he returns to himself with his own mind, the first thing he feels is a faint regret. Not that he didn't die; that has become the norm, unnoticeable because of its predictability of always being present. No, he regrets that the creature is gone. If anything, he distantly wishes the creature would have stayed a moment longer, just to let him keep a bit more of that moment, of that feeling...

Then the adrenaline begins to wear off and the Doctor is forced to wonder if he's more scared of the fact that the humans were ready to throw him out, or that he was willing to let the creature invade his mind and endanger the humans.

He's disappointed, in the humans and in himself, but more strikingly, he's mostly disappointed in the creature for not being strong enough.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	16. Chapter 16: Twisting

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 16: Twisting**

* * *

 _"The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun. But this is the truth, Doctor."_ The Doctor clears his throat, Davros' voice echoing through his mind.

 _"You take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons. Behold your Children of Time, transformed into murderers._

 _"I made the Daleks, Doctor. You made this."_

The Doctor almost - almost - laughs. He wanted to say, "Took you long enough." He wanted to say, "You don't know the half of it."

Davros made the Daleks, the over-bright monstrosities that parallel only with the Doctor. The Doctor made something even worse.

The Doctor envies the Daleks, not only because they don't have shadows, but because they are curdled representations of hate. They are expected to hate, nothing more, nothing less.

But being a Time Lord, being sensitive to Time and Space and timelines that can abruptly end at any time at an exponential ratio to humans, so much more is expected of him. So much that the expectations have twisted his true emotions and morals into something darker, into shadows. At his reflection, he feels shadows, he expects shadows, and strains - wants - to see a shadow in his reflection.

Because no one expects anything of a shadow but that it be a shadow.

The real twist, however, is that shadows are nothing. Nothing is expected of nothing because it is nothing, and to be nothing is to not be. So the Doctor takes what he can get and gets as close as possible to nothing.

He does nothing to stop Rose Tyler from falling in love with him. He does nothing to stop Martha Jones from becoming a soldier. He does nothing to shield Donna from her insecurities. Nothingness does nothing.

But because he is something that does nothing, something with nothing always has a consequence. Humans without money live on the streets. Animals without food starve to death. Life without death is a nothing.

The Doctor's consequence is himself. He looks at his friends, and he sees what he has turned them into. He looks at the human race, and he sees how much he has meddled. He looks in the mirror and he sees something he abhors more than violence.

The curse of the Time Lords is not 'living on'. The curse is living on when every fibre of being in the universe rebels against your existence. He tries to change, to escape the endless death around him. He changes his actions, he changes his face, he changes his companions.

He does it all in a futile attempt that maybe twisting them into things they're not will twist him into something he's not.

He never realizes twisting himself is what started it all.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	17. Chapter 17: Accuracy

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 17: Accuracy**

* * *

"They're trying to make him angry."

River speaks it like it's the most despicable, terrible thing in the universe. The Doctor considers letting the laughter itching at the back of his throat bubble out through his mouth. Keeps his lips pressed tightly together. He won't prove River right, he _won't_.

He already has. In her timeline, he must have done, countless times, and it's that notion that sends the shadows into a glaze over his eyes, blurs the anti-grav into the shape of his own face. He shoots completely on point with a grim accuracy.

The world twists upside down too fast for him to contemplate the satisfaction of his shot.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	18. Chapter 18: Layers

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 18: Layers**

* * *

His dark side is not what he expected. Of course, he knew it almost too well, living as it and wrapping the skin of a good man around his soul, but an actual physical representation of himself separate to his true being - it was not what the Doctor had expected.

The bowtie and suit were a bit expected, actually. Millenia of living, and truly the one sin he would never stop committing was his offense on the eyes of anyone with a plausible fashion sense. But the clothes had been all that the Doctor had understood.

He had looked normal. Like a real, normal person. A bit on the creepy, odd uncle side and perhaps a voice too close to an elf for comfort, but otherwise normal. It was a bit terrifying to ponder, that even the dark side of him hid behind a normal visage. He hid his inner self so well that the dust causing the hallucination couldn't even dig deep enough to find the real Doctor.

The Doctor absentmindedly wondered exactly how far the dust had gotten before realizing its attempt would be futile and giving up.

Amy had given up. She had participated, as the Dream Lord toyed with her, engaging in conversation and working to figure out who he was. But, in the end, she had given up as well, and fell back to the one person she really could rely on - the person she really loved. The Doctor was proud, in a sense.

She had followed her instincts with Rory, and she had followed her instincts with him.

He just hopes he'll never meet anyone stubborn enough to see the real him.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	19. Chapter 19: Madman

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 19: Madman**

* * *

The TARDIS had been shoved into a human body. (A sexy human body, but he tried not to think about that while their lives were in danger. Whether or not he had succeeded...)

She was deteriorating by the second, and yet she still found time to send him quips and argue with him and be so delightfully tangible and real and there.

It's when they're faced with the graveyard of dead TARDISes that the Doctor wonders for the first time: Can the TARDIS see the shadows?

With the haunted look in her eyes, it seems as though she can see them. But mortal souls are much, much different than immortal souls and the Doctor has to wonder how different a TARDIS shadow is from a human shadow. That is, until Idris interrupts his train of thought.

"So dark and brooding, avoiding the light and avoiding shadows at the same time. You used to sit in that one room of your companion, Teagan." She paused, tilting her head and staring at him. "You don't visit that room anymore. I've had it in my databanks all this time and now you don't use it."

The Doctor swallowed, felt his hands grapple for each other and begin their usual wringing. He turns away, mutters with something of a lump in his throat, "We all have to move on sometime."

The Doctor started, startled by the hand on his shoulder Idris had placed there. "No," she says, "Sometimes we need places where we can go back and revisit times when we hadn't moved on. If or when we are finished here, I'll give you your own room. Do not stay in there too long."

A small, sad smile formed on the Doctor's face, and he shook his head. "Mm, what would I be without you?"

Idris turned, plucked a piece of metal from off of the ground. "Mad," she said.

He couldn't tell if she was kidding or not.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	20. Chapter 20: Hide-away

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 20: Hide-away**

* * *

The Doctor eventually goes back to the room, the first one he had locked himself in for an indefinite amount of time after the end of the Time War. It is as dark as ever, no light fixtures inside, and door sealed shut.

He still sits in the room, occasionally, whenever he feels especially tainted. He takes a sort of comfort in the fact that there aren't any shadows in the room - can't be any shadows, because there is no light. It's a consummation to the Doctor, a halting finalization that keeps him sane enough for everyday life.

He lives with too much light, it's hard not to see the dark inside himself, sometimes.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	21. Chapter 21: Haven

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 21: Haven**

* * *

Amy finds the room. It's late at night, and the Doctor is in the room, sitting in the middle of it and brooding. 'Having a pity party', 'calming himself down', 'taking some time alone', are all what River has called it. She has never seen the room, but she has searched for him in the TARDIS and has concluded that there is, in fact, a room the Doctor lets no one see where he goes to be alone.

Amy finds the room, and the Doctor starts at the light bleeding into the room. The Time Lord has never actually seen what the interior of the room looks like, only that it is small and dark and just the right kind of room for him to be alone in. Now, a small portion of it is illuminated, minus the gaping hole where Amy's shadow is cast over the light.

The Doctor shudders, the motion unseen in the darkness.

"It's seriously dark in here," Amy comments, reaches out a hand to the wall as if searching for a light switch.

For a moment, the Doctor is hit with petrification because - what if there is a light switch? What if the room he's been living in with darkness is, indeed, not a haven for the dark but for the light?

He feels ridiculous a moment later when Amy stops searching for the light switch.

Feels even more terrified when Amy gives a small, "There we go, that's better."

The Doctor pauses, looks around. Darkness. All he's ever seen in this room. He looks to the threshold. Amy is still standing there, but the light bleeding into the room is gone. Instead, her shadow is bleeding into the hallway behind her, as if there was some form of light coming from the dark room. The Doctor swallows, wills the shadows away and almost cries out at what he sees.

This is Teagan's bedroom. There are dozens of lights; on the ceiling fan, two lamps, strung lights, everywhere there is light. He hadn't been in a room devoid of light.

He had been in a room overpowered with shadows.

Feeling the bile rise in his throat, the Doctor sprinted past Amy and to the bathroom, where he emptied the contents of his stomach into the toilet. "Bad lunch," is what he tells Amy when she asks.

Throws up three more times that day.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	22. Chapter 22: Flatline

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 22: Flatline**

* * *

He needs a baseline.

River is the closest thing he has to species-kin, but he doubts she would know anything about being a real Time Lord. Gallifreyan is what she was. Time Lords came with the culture.

The Doctor had been there at the end of the War when the culture began to crumble. The councils' morals deteriorated, and after a while, so did his.

He needs a baseline to keep himself straight, balanced, or the shadows will tempt him to the edge and jump!

His heartbeats are fast.

Considers the notion that a steady flatline would be baseline enough.

* * *

 ** _Jan. 17, 2016_**

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	23. Chapter 23: Secret

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 23: Secret**

* * *

Rory is the first to know.

It slips out, one night in the dark where the shadows control his tongue and he can't hide from himself. Rory had wandered in, unable to sleep but equally unable to muster up the willpower and bravery to wake Amy. Found his way to the console room, where the Doctor managed to blurt out the secret.

Centuries of hiding and a simple night and eavesdropping and his secret has bastardized the air, corrupted it.

Centuries of not a word. Yet Rory has a look of utmost understanding that the Doctor has to turn away.

The Doctor knows, Rory knew.

Maybe Rory has a few shadows of his own.

* * *

 ** _Jan. 17, 2016_**

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	24. Chapter 24: Methodology

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 24: Methodology**

* * *

He takes female companions. It's not to mate, because if it was, he would have done that long ago - and he can't let the darkness in him spread, can't let it survive past himself, because the universe would be better off without this thing in it - and it's not because they're prettier. There used to be a reason, now lost in dust and ashes and death. Now there's a stronger reason.

The feminine shadows are kind. Masculine shadows scream and cry and express themselves directly, tearing the Doctor's attention away from reality. The feminine shadows throw him into a state of unreality by staring, quietly. They are patient, wait their turn. They are methodical in doling out punishment.

Organized pain.

He shakes his head when Amy asks why he's smiling like that.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	25. Chapter 25: Clara

**A/N: Shadow Shots Chapter 25: Clara**

* * *

She's not real.

She has shadows on her face, contouring around her form, shadows inside her eyes. She's - wrong. Shadows follow, trail, aren't inside of people. She's impossible, and it scares him almost more than himself.

She thinks it's a game. He wonders when she'll realize exactly how scared of him she should be.

He wonders when she'll realize he has too many shadows for his eyes.

* * *

 _ **Jan. 17, 2016**_

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


End file.
